Integrity, p.21
Integrity, page 21
“Well, firstly, I’ve never met either of them. Thank fuck. So it’s not like having them as my direct bosses. And secondly, Congress is made up of the sum total of its parts, the good and the bad. Thirdly, yeah I suppose technically I work for the president and vice president if you want to distill it down to who sits in the Oval Office. But no matter who’s occupying the White House and how I personally feel about that, my job is the same.” I kissed her quickly but not softly. “In my mind, I work for people like you. Keeping you safe.”
Sophia gave me a sweet, eyelash-fluttering smile. “Now that is a usage of my tax dollars that I’m happy with. Keeping cute government employees employed.”
I gave her a smile of my own then turned back to my sandwich. Sophia pressed against me, stroking my thigh as I ate the rest of my dinner while half-heartedly watching the vice president blathering. I’d never paid much attention to the way he spoke before, but now Sophia had mentioned it, he really did have a weird accent—a thug who’d been born with money. And of course, now I was tuned to it, I couldn’t push it aside.
Something about the way he pronounced funding stuck in my brain and refused to budge. Boston accent. I let my mind blank until the thought burrowed in further. Too far to be pulled out. Thinking about Boston brought my four Boston Unicorns to mind, and I almost choked on the pickle I’d just put in my mouth as the face of one in particular nudged its way to the front. Staring at the TV screen where the vice president was still rambling, everything coalesced into a single clear point of fact. It was unmistakable.
“Excuse me a minute,” I blurted as I set my plate on the coffee table. Scrambling over Sophia, I said, “You can finish my chips.”
She gave me a curious look, shrugged, then grabbed the last handful of chips from the plate.
Heart pounding, I brought up each of my Boston unicorn dossiers again, and stared at the four faces. Discarding three, I zoomed in on the remaining photograph. I wasn’t wrong. It was a logical conclusion, wasn’t it? I stared intently at the face of Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Randolf Kannegieter. The middle name. The face. No. Oh no. No…yes.
My brain made a leap and I yanked it back before it leaped off the precipice. Assumptions could be dangerous. But this was such an obvious leap. Anyone with eyes would be able to see it. I looked at the television. Back to my laptop screen. Yes… Could it really be this easy? Something I hadn’t even considered, something I hadn’t even been looking for, and I’d just tripped over it.
Scrambling off the chair, I collected my dirty laptop from where it was charging on the floor near the bathroom door. Sophia’s eyes followed me as I rushed back to the table. I opened up a private browser and typed Randolf Berenson. Top result. Wikipedia. Randolf Michael Berenson, 49th Vice President of the United States. I tabbed to Images and slid the two laptops close together.
Oh my fucking god. How had I not seen it earlier when I was looking at the dossiers, trying to find something more? This was definitely my more. Randolf M. Berenson, 49th Vice President of the United States and Lt. Col. Patrick Randolf Kannegieter shared a strong jaw and cleft chin that stretched lips thin, the same cool blue eyes and strong nose, the same pale complexion and red hair. I didn’t need a face-matching program, nor would anyone who had eyes and a modicum of logic. I knew the moment I saw them side by side that they shared genetic material.
How had anyone who worked with Lt. Col. Kannegieter not noticed this before? I shook the thought out. Because they had no reason to see any connection. I hadn’t seen it. The only reason it’d twigged was because I’d been poring over these photographs in close proximity to seeing the vice president.
Uncle and nephew? My gut turned over uneasily as I discarded the idea. This resemblance was far too strong—it was a closer blood tie than that. This was father and son. I’d bet my paycheck on it. An entire year’s worth. And in case you’re wondering how much certainty that translated to? I had a killer mortgage, I loved expensive wine, good food, and overseas travel.
I shoved my knuckles into my mouth to stop myself from blurting what I’d found, and instead mumbled, “Fuuuck” around my fist.
“What?” Sophia asked. She’d been quietly watching my manic display. The woman was an absolute goddess. For the millionth time I told myself I had to make this up to her when all of this was done. If I could, I mentally amended.
“Just found—” I almost forgot myself. Almost let it slip. After a pause to collect my thoughts, I added a vague, “Never mind.” I looked up and smiled to try to soften the brush-off. “Something really good. I think. Maybe.”
“That’s great.” Her expression was soft, understanding, and then she smiled and nodded and turned her attention back to her brownie dessert.
I turned my attention back to my revelation. Even though I was sure of the results, I typed in Randolf Berenson children. Yep, two daughters. But only two daughters listed doesn’t mean he didn’t sire other children. Okay, stop. Facts. Just facts. Well, why couldn’t that be a fact? Just because something wasn’t publicly known didn’t make it any less true. Unless it’s only true because you want it to be, Lexie. So let’s work out the truth.
There was also the name—Randolf was not common and two men who looked like they were cast from the same mold having it as first name and middle name was more than coincidental. Okay, so the last names were different but that wasn’t uncommon. Especially if someone, say one of the most powerful people in the country, was trying to hide the fact that this person was their son. Previous marriage? No, he’d only been married once, still married to the lovely Mrs. Berenson. So this was his illegitimate son. Maybe. Allegedly and all that.
Cool cool. No big deal, right? Just the VP’s (alleged) hidden illegitimate son committing war crimes in cahoots with Russia. What a time to be alive.
There was only one thing left to do before moving on. I couldn’t do facial matching, and I definitely wasn’t going to ask Bink to do it, so I needed to verify the voices of the American and Kannegieter matched. Or as best I could using just my ears. With no access to our voice database, there was only one option. Googling Lt. Col. P.R. Kannegieter. There were a few vague mentions, mostly relating to Army this and that. Nothing about the fact he was possibly responsible for murdering hundreds of innocent people, of course.
On the third page I struck gold with a YouTube video for an Army promotion ceremony that listed Kannegieter among the names of the newly promoted. Headphones in. Bland chatter, line-up of soldiers, a few promotions and remarks. At 10:46 my boy Kannegieter stepped onto the stage to receive his new rank pins. Military talk. Then it was time for the new Major Kannegieter to make his remarks. I turned the volume up.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Oh. Fuck.
I didn’t need voice matching software. I only needed ears. I didn’t know if I wanted to let out a triumphant yell, puke, cry, or all three. This was…huge. Unconfirmed, but huge. I had basic information and now, I needed to find the golden ticket. A connection between Patrick Randolf Kannegieter’s birth mother and our illustrious VP. Given the comparatively young age of VP compared to Lt. Col., the most obvious link was high school or college. Thankfully Kannegieter was a less common last name than something like Johnson. I searched frantically through the personnel file for the forms that showed emergency contacts. FATHER NAME Berenson, Randolf M. would be too easy, but I could dream.
In the box for MOTHER NAME was Kannegieter, Patricia A.
Patricia and Randolf. They may as well have left me a note in the file saying “Patrick Randolf is our child!” I brought up another browser and typed in Patricia Kannegieter Randolf Berenson Boston. After a few moments of deep thought and quick Googling, I added Marks Academy or Harvard. Bless the ease of finding things on the Internet, like the schools our members of Congress attended.
It took an hour of trawling through sites, archived school records and assorted random ex-student pages reminiscing about their time at school before I hit the jackpot. A low-res scanned photograph from a high-school yearbook dated 1978. Patricia Kannegieter and Randolf Berenson – Junior Prom King and Queen. Aww, they were high school sweethearts who had a murderous traitorous child. How adorable. I studied the photograph. Lt. Col. Kannegieter had his mother’s ears, the shape of her eyes.
Some more digging told me she missed graduation and the months before due to illness. 1979. I did some basic math. The year Lt. Col. Kannegieter was born. I made a mental leap, perhaps a judgmental one. Given the vice president’s father was Governor of Massachusetts at the time, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Governor Berenson wasn’t overly pleased with the fact his teenage son had gotten a teenage girl pregnant.
Yet Patricia Kannegieter had remained in Boston and raised her child. With or without the help of teenaged Berenson? Given he left for Harvard in ’79, I was going to put my money on without. Juicy, but not entirely relevant to what I was working on. Just more reasons to dislike Berenson. As if I needed another.
Fuck. This really was what it looked like. I set all the pieces out on the table—metaphorically—and started moving them around like a pretend chessboard. No matter how I set the board up, no matter what opener I used or followed with, I came up with the same basic answer. The illegitimate son of the current Vice President of the United States had been the military officer directly liaising with a foreign militia group to carry out a chemical weapon test on a group of innocent unsuspecting civilians in exchange for either weapons-slash-cash-slash-aid, or all of the above.
Take a breath. Go over it again. I did, twice, and arrived at the same conclusion. I didn’t want premature closure—jumping to the most obvious answer without looking at all the facts—but based on everything I knew, there really was only one conclusion that followed logic. If I had more facts maybe I would think differently, but for now, this was what I had. Why would they be going to such lengths to keep it hidden from the Intelligence Community? Because this was a personal and political embarrassment on top of an international humanitarian disaster. I knew no chemical weapon test of this magnitude would come without the highest authorization, which meant the VP knew about it. But did he know that it was Lt. Col. Kannegieter? My gut said yes, though probably not until after the fact.
I almost laughed. No wonder everyone was all over this. No fucking wonder they were trying to keep this away from all eyes. And my eyes were all over it. A sudden wave of nausea made me realize the implications of everything I knew. This was not only a huge deal but also frightening, as the reasons for my current situation grew clearer and clearer. The people trying to smother me were working on direct orders from the White House.
And Halcyon was going to use this intel to remove Vice President Berenson from office. But why remove Berenson? What’s the reason? It’s not your business, Lexie. But it kind of was. I’d run through mini-hell for this. The vice president was disgusting—bigoted, racist, xenophobic, self-serving, cruel and uncaring to those in lower tax brackets than him—but just because he was a horrible human didn’t mean he was dangerous to our country. Unless he actually was.
What would make him dangerous? Not him having an illegitimate son. Not his illegitimate son either having Russian allegiance, or spying for Russia, or helping Russia do horrible things—that was just disgusting and traitorous. I made another logic leap, smooshing Berenson and Russia closer together. That one really was speculation and I had absolutely no proof. Yet. But Russia just kept popping up.
I mean, it wasn’t the first time a member of Congress had been seduced by the ruble. But the vice president? Occam tap-danced around the room with his razor. It was logical, right? Not just me? Fuck, I didn’t have the time, or the resources, or the mental acuity, to get into forensic accounting, follow money trails, connect Berenson to the million threads that had started unraveling in this intelligence. That was for Halcyon to follow up, Halcyon with all their resources and all their nice offices. I was simply going to present Lennon what I’d found, hint at what I thought, and see if Halcyon could reach the same conclusions.
No wonder I’d been told to keep a copy of this information safe. Fuck. Enacting the Protocol indeed. Hopefully enacting the Protocol also meant going after whatever sick fuckers had manufactured the chemical weapon, and ensuring it could never be produced again. I leaned back in the chair, exhaling a long sigh. I just felt…sick. Sick at what had happened in Kunduz, sick that I’d been forced into this situation because of it, and sick because someone entrusted with the safety and prosperity of my fellow countrypeople might not actually have their best interests at heart.
It was time to see Derek. Face-to-face. I needed to find out what he knew. The nausea surged even harder, and I looked around for a distraction.
Found one. A very good one.
I stared intently at Sophia, who was now curled up on the couch, reading, with a glass of wine resting on the couch arm. I blinked hard. It was like living in a time warp—burying myself in work then surfacing to see something had changed like food, drink, book, television, clothing, location. Seeing her helped soothe some of my distress. “Sophia?”
She didn’t lift her eyes from her book. She was almost done with the two-inch-thick paperback she’d borrowed from Bink. “Yes, hon?”
My mouth turned itself into a smile before I could think about it. “Firstly, you calling me hon is adorable. Secondly, you’re a genius.”
That got her attention. She peered over at me, her eyes questioning. “How so?”
“I think you might have just saved the world, not me. I’ve been looking at this so closely I hadn’t even thought to go big big picture yet. I could kiss you.”
“Then do,” she said simply.
“I will, but quickly.” Offering a sheepish smile, I added, “Because now I have more work to do.” I stood and moved to the couch, holding out my hand to her. Sophia set down her book and let me pull her up. Snugging an arm around her waist, I kissed her like she’d just handed me the key to the place I’d been locked out of for the past week. Great kiss. “And there’ll be more of that later.”
“There’d better be.” She thumbed the edge of my mouth, leaned in to grant me another quick kiss then went back to the couch, her book, and her little bubble of contentment. After opening the book again, she asked, “So why am I a genius?”
I flopped down onto the couch beside her, exhaling a long disbelieving breath. “I think you just walked past, and without even thinking about it, pointed out how to finish my jigsaw puzzle.”
Chapter Sixteen
How easily it falls apart
When I woke without Sophia on top of or beneath me, I panicked. 5:42 a.m. The room was dim, any streetlights that might have illuminated the space hidden behind curtains. My eyes went immediately to the bathroom. Door open, light off. The room door was closed and chained. I sat up, looking around frantically for her, aware that it was taking me an embarrassingly long time to reboot my faculties.
I’d been asleep for maybe an hour after working late, trying to find more solid evidence of Berenson’s ties to Russia, of him being directly responsible for the weapon test in Kunduz, of…anything really. But I was going around in circles because I just didn’t have the resources and personnel I needed. So I wrote a report for Lennon, laying out every strand of the spiderweb I’d been tangled in, and had finally crawled into bed a little after four a.m. And Sophia had definitely been there.
“I’m here,” came the quiet murmur from across the room.
I turned on the bedside lamp and found Sophia on the couch, her legs drawn up to her chest. “You okay?” I asked, clearing my throat to chase away the sleep hoarseness.
“Yes and no.”
The answer, coupled with the fact she was not only awake, but out of bed way before me, had my radar pinging. “What’s up?” I untangled myself from the sheets, flipping on the room light as I went to sit beside her.
Sophia had her phone in her hand, turning it around and around. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d see what’s going on with the world, check my emails.” She met my eyes, the edges of hers crinkling with the hint of a smile. “And before you ask, yes, I used a VPN.”
Holding up both hands, I jokingly rebutted, “I would never have asked or implied that you hadn’t been cybersafe, but I’m glad you did.” I took her hand, stilling the nervous phone spinning. “What’s up?” I asked again, gently. “Did they cancel Top Chef?”
She shook her head.
“Okay, then what is it? Or don’t you want to talk about it?”
Sophia’s eyebrows knitted together as her teeth nervously played with her lower lip. “I do, just not sure how to bring it up.”
Ominous. My stomach lurched, but my voice remained steady when I queried, “Ah, then I assume it’s something about us?” When she nodded, I continued, “Is it something you think is going to hurt my feelings?”
“I’m not sure,” she murmured. “I don’t think so, but I also don’t think you’ll be happy about it.”
I had a sickening feeling what she might be about to say and tried to look interested instead of like I was already trying to figure out how to talk myself out of it. “Okay, well, I’m an adult. Mostly.” I squeezed her hand. “So why not just lay it on me and we’ll see where we end up.”
Sophia pulled her hand from underneath mine to free her phone. “Someone sent me a weird email.” After thumbing her phone screen, she passed it to me.
“I can’t read your email.”
